


a name on his wrist

by Larrant



Series: bound by fate, you and i [1]
Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, On BOTH SIDES, One-Sided Attraction, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, xD all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4298001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he tries to forget the name on his wrist- but sometimes it just doesn't work</p><p><b>1st rewrite</b>: 12/07/16</p>
            </blockquote>





	a name on his wrist

**Author's Note:**

> :3 hopefully there'll be more coming soon
> 
> I'm not very happy with this at all, but I mean, I just wanted to get this out. There'll be more coming out soon, and hopefully better ones too!

He's born with it on his wrist, a looping, calligraphic name, a soft brown that's just barely visible against his skin- it makes him think that whoever it is must be someone gentle, because he's seen other people's names and some of them were big blocky black letters, like somebody had been writing too hard and it was going through the paper their pen was on. But _his_  writing is a little looping, just a tiny bit scrawled- and it's neat, neat to precision- the two 'l's at the end are exactly the same. He's spent enough time looking at them that he knows they're exactly the same width and height.

He used to trace his finger across it as a child, memorizing every curve and indent. As a teenager he would dream about meeting them- not the daydream kind, just, sometimes when he closed his eyes and he dreamt and and whenever he woke he would have forgotten what they looked like, forgotten everything except for the lingering vision of blue as bright as the sky he saw in picture books- even brighter, he assumed, and much more beautiful.

Tyrell is a boy's name- he looks it up in the library one time. It's not American, and it means 'ruler of thunder'. Elliot quite likes it. He also realizes, around the same time, why his mother _dislikes_ it. She probably thinks that it's a guy's name on his wrist, and she's already decided it's probably going to be bad for him when he grows up and meets whoever they are. "It wouldn't be so much fuss if you just had someone normal," she tells him at one point, sighing.

Elliot thinks about it, and thinks that he doesn't care. Besides, in primary school he knew a boy who had a cousin who's name was Tyrell, and _she_ was a girl. But he's still convinced his is a guy all the same.

Nowadays, with work and hacking and going to Krista every week- he's forgotten the man, relocated him under a band that circles his wrist and hides Tyrell from the world. Soulmate bands are popular- everyone wears them, since a soulmate is something personal and private. Or well, they are until you meet them.

Elliot has decided he wears his for another reason entirely.

The precise reasoning behind this decision: there's just not the time to think of someone who isn't even real, nor the time to indulge in idle fantasies. He grew out of his soulmate when he was around twenty. It wasn't like your partner had to be your soulmate anyway.

Besides, there are things to do and people to hack, a revolution to create. On good days, he never even thinks of Tyrell at all.

But it doesn't work, not for everything. He's pretty fucked up in the head, after all. And sometimes, usually four hours after he's placed eight milligrams of suboxone under his tongue, and he's suddenly dropping from that high- well, the place under his wristband starts itching, and he thinks his eyes start to as well, because there's always an emptiness in him- it's an emptiness he likes to ignore, most days.

Sometimes, naturally, it doesn't let Elliot ignore it.

There's a space on the ground, wedged between the bed and the dresser. He'd realized pretty early on it's the perfect space for someone his size to curl up in and cry. It's not crying though, not really. It's more like ugly gasping because he can't remember how to cry properly, and sometimes the tears come but sometimes he tries but they don't- the tears are _there_ , he can feel them behind his eyes, itching like crazy and building up until the pressure is too big to stand. And then they just never come out.

Usually that's when he thinks about Tyrell again- not even Tyrell, just. The hope for anyone, anyone at all, who might fill that gaping hole inside him.

And then afterwards, when he's rocked himself to sleep and woken up again, not wanting to wake up, the light shines through the broken window blinds and it's like nothing ever happened. He goes back to work, and the cycle repeats all over again. Sometimes its with morphine instead of suboxone. He refuses all the free samples he gets offered, so he can keep the list _just_ to morphine and suboxone.

And then after he gets Qwerty, he looks at Qwerty and wonders whether or not the fish thinks in the same way as him. He always looks so mournful, really. Elliot resolves to get him a neighbour, but never gets around to it because he doesn't know where any fish sellers are.

And then. One day. A normal day. A normal work day, at work. He's working. He meets Tyrell Wellick, senior vice president of technology for Evil Corp.

His heart stops for just a beat.  _Tyrell_.

The man has blue eyes, they are brighter than the sky and twice as beautiful. They're startling, the first thing he sees.

Before he realizes it, his mouth is opening- but the words that leave are just automatic, memorized after such a long time that they come out without any effort. "Elliot, just a tech," he says with a shrug and a smile, his hand still warm from the handshake. It's all normal, except maybe his eyes are fixed on Tyrell Wellick's for longer than a normal person's might.

It's a little funny, or rather a little ironic, after the first thought of- Tyrell, _my_ Tyrell- he's already persuading himself that this isn't his Tyrell, at least not the one written on his wrist. Never mind that he's searched before and there's hardly anyone named Tyrell in this country and statistics say that you'll almost certainly meet your soulmate before 30 and he's almost 30 now and with the rarity of the name surely this Tyrell might be his-

He forgets, for a moment, about the 'stop thinking about it' thing.

He wonders, after a moment, if its just him trying to find his Tyrell somewhere where he isn't. Besides, the man works for Evil Corp. It's impossible.

But the man doesn't leave when Elliot doesn't say anything further. He keeps on talking. And Elliot can hardly keep up because he's still hyperventilating a little inside, still telling himself that this isn't his Tyrell and if it was then shouldn't there be something, something more and so it probably isn't but it might be and oh shit. He wants to say something, something to just, well, make sure- but, he has no idea what to say.

He's so busy thinking that he almost doesn't hear the goodbye.

"I should... join the rest of the group." That slightly disappointed phrase jolts him out of his thoughts, and he blinks slightly, having barely caught any of the snippets of conversation before that, but the man's already leaving, giving him a small wave over his shoulder as he goes, "Bon soir, Elliot."

And then he's gone.

And its almost like nothing ever happened, apart from it just did.

The whole one-sided conversation replays itself in his mind as he slowly turns back to his screen, fights the urge to look across at where Tyrell is, and after a few, agonizing moments- because he's never met anyone else called Tyrell before and this might be the only Tyrell he ever meets- he shakes his head and gets back to work.

No, it isn't his Tyrell. And. Even if it is, Elliot doesn't need him. Not any more.

He doesn't forget about Tyrell Wellick, though. Even if the panic disintegrates after several minutes and he thinks he was rather foolish for being so suddenly convinced.

The blue of the man's eyes stays with him, and even though he's aware now that _his_ Tyrell and _that_ Tyrell are different people- well, he still wonders if they'll ever meet again. He wonders if his Tyrell is still out there- he knows that there's always a proportion of people whose soulmates are dead before they even have the chance to meet them, and he thinks that he might just as well be in that percentage of people.

They do end up meeting. Much sooner than he would have expected. As a matter of fact, much, much sooner.

"Bon soir, Elliot," comes the faintly accented voice- he's not even sure what accent it is, but it sounds like its from somewhere in Europe. So Tyrell Wellick isn't American. He hadn't looked American. But- his mind travels back to the present- he's in Evil Corp's main headquarters in the city, looking at a man in the top one percent of the top one percent, a man who is currently surrounded by lawyers. And he's only wearing a hoodie with jeans.

It's intimidating, enough that he's frozen.

He's not sure whether to be confused or relieved when Tyrell tells him he wants to recruit him instead of blackmail him or tell him that yes its done and he's going to be spending 40 years in jail.

He decides to be confused when the lawyers are all sent out leaving only the both of them in the boardroom.

And then his mind fully processes what has happened and he realizes that shit, they're alone in the boardroom.

"I should track down those hackers out there just to thank them." Elliot is still too shocked the entire thing happened to feel any anger over the situation- it only occurs to him dimly that this was not what he was trying to do, that this was not what he had signed up for by meeting Mr. Robot. "In a way its kind of, what's the word in English... serendipitous, right?"

Yes, that's right.

"You know, by the end of the quarter," Tyrell gets up, and Elliot has the startling urge to just back out of the room when he is approached, "We're going to revamp our entire network and consolidate our security protocols."

He is too close to Elliot, and almost subconsciously Elliot backs away, but Tyrell just follows- almost as if he knows how uncomfortable the physical closeness is making him, or rather doing it on purpose- until there's nowhere for him to back away to anymore and he just looks down instead, tries his hardest not to meet Tyrell's gaze. It's funny how much he feels like a mouse cornered by a cat.

The refusal is already on Elliot's tongue, but somehow he can't speak, and he almost can't hear Tyrell speak either- it's all just a background sort of fuzz, not quite there, not quite in reality.

"... I want you to be where you belong, here, with me," the man murmurs- and that's the line which abruptly cuts Elliot out of his stupor, yanks him back into cold reality.

And suddenly, never mind what was said before, never mind anything else- suddenly he knows with startling clarity that this _is_ his Tyrell, that this is the Tyrell who has Elliot's name on his wrist as well and has had it ever since Elliot was born. Maybe its the tone of Tyrell's voice, maybe its just that he says it at all, but its a realization that comes to him and tightens on his mind.

But that would make him _Tyrell's_ soulmate too. And that's when his mind snaps back into _reality_ reality. No, _no, **no**_ \- he'd heard wrong, or else he'd gotten the wrong impression. That's not right. That's not right at all. He already knows that they don't fit at all together.

And then his mouth opens of its own accord, because he's probably been thinking about these things for at least several seconds and Elliot needs to say something otherwise it would just look strange- "I..." he begins, and then he hesitates. Because- just, what if- what if this really was his soulmate? Wouldn't Tyrell take a refusal like a refusal of their bond- if it even existed?

And then he breathes out, and tells himself no, because either way Tyrell Wellick, vice president of technology in Evil Corp, is not his soulmate.

"I think I'm happy... where I am."

He drops his gaze almost immediately after that- the tension in the air is almost palpable, and as he looks down at the stone floor, the marble tiling stares back at him with accusation. He looks back up again in time to see Tyrell looking disappointed, extremely disappointed, and the man says nothing before turning away and walking to the paned windows. Elliot realizes that he looks almost like a photograph, hands tucked in his pockets and looking out onto the city below him.

(yes, see? the relief is palpable, too, tyrell definitely wouldn't react like that if elliot was his soulmate)

"Well, I thought I'd ask," Tyrell says- and it's almost less to him than to the skyscrapers in the distance, but the dismissal is clear. Elliot wants to speak, wants to say something, but he doesn't know what to say, so without a word he picks up his rucksack and leaves.

The hammering in his chest doesn't stop, not until he's all the way back on the streets surrounded by people and he can breathe again.

Still.

He goes back home that night, the name under his wrist itching, and hacks Tyrell Wellick.

 

 


End file.
